Despite knowing better, I have allowed Resistance (as Pressfield would term it) to kick my ass and stand with its jackboot on my neck. And, as Pressfield so accurately predicts, this turning away from my passion has resulted in a deep undercurrent of discontent.

A new job has me on a commuter train after years of working from home. Funny thing: with less ‘free time’ I’m actually getting some writing done again. It’s like characters in a story: when we limit their freedom of movement, they are forced to actually DO SOMETHING to counteract what is threatening them.

Suffice to say I was never so happy as when Sitting in Darkness was rolling merrily along, and I was churning out weird, little stories.

It’s time for me to go back down to that dark place where the stories live. Maybe other things are down there too..but I can’t control that.

The Chattanooga Chalupa is remembered for his gambling skills and his quiet viciousness with his drawn Schofields. But I know for a fact that he was, more than anything, a lover of women.

Some say he come out of San Antonio. Some say he was the bastard child of a whore in Nuevo Laredo who abandoned him to be raised in a culvert by armadillos. There were stories of his winning Montezuma’s Gold in Mexico City the same night a Caribbean princess dropped to her knees in front of him and begged him to kill her father and usurp the throne.

I don’t rightly know where he hailed from, originally. But I met him, godammit. No one in this shit-hole town believes me, ‘cause I been drunk for about sixty-seven years now. But I was there in Dodge City the night The Chattanooga Chalupa won big at Mrs. Bridewell’s Saloon and put a bullet between the eyes of Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan.

I was eleven years old. You see, in Dodge City at that time, Miss Bridewell run the most fantastic and profitable saloon in all the Kansas Territory. Card players of fame from all over come there to try their hand at beating Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan, who was at once the owner of Mrs. Bridewell’s Saloon, the best and most famous card player at said establishment, and none other than the husband of the same Mrs. Bridewell that run the upstairs whorehouse.

Now, you might be wondering why he was called Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan. Well, that was on account of the way he got to snorting and snuffling in the presence of tobacco smoke. You could say it was an unfortunate ailment for a man who spent his entire life in the confines of a saloon. No sooner would some cowpoke or gunslinger or gambler light up a hand-rolled tobacco stick, than old Jimmy’d start leaking at the nose and eyes. He carried a filthy snot rag with him that always seemed stuffed in his face. To this day, my memory will not give me a clear picture of Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan. I can only remember those red, watery eyes.

And of course, the big hole in his forehead put there by The Chalupa.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

See, in those days, it weren’t nothing for a man to travel from town to town and try to establish himself as the cock of the walk. For gunslingers, you traveled around and shot folks. And you kept on shooting folks until you were shot dead yourself. Or until no one would come out to face you anymore, which, for a gunslinger, amounts to about the same thing. For card players, you’d hear of high-stakes games or unbeatable players and you’d set off on the road to wherever all that excitement was happening and try your hand.

Well, sometimes, a man could think himself the best in several areas. The Chattanooga Chalupa was one of those guys. He was said to be able to bluff and call five poker aces, pleasure a bored Mexican whore, and place a bullet between the eyes of a challenger who’d looked at him cross-eyed at fifty feet – all at the same time, without breaking a sweat or breathing heavy.

Now, I know that’s a lot of set-up for this here story, but I want you to understand just how the world was back then. There weren’t no radios and such. So, gentleman like Wyatt Earp or The Chalupa were legends – like King Arthur or, I don’t know, Marco Polo. Stories about ‘em were carried from town to town on the stages and, later, the trains.

Anyways, the night I met him, I was helping my Mama get into her corset. She was a whore for Mrs., Bridewell and, because of our relation, I was able to work in the whorehouse, doing things like sweeping the saloon and swapping out sheets from the short-time rooms, which I have to tell you was disgusting.

Well, downstairs Cryin’ Jimmy Ryan was fleecing the customers, as usual. My Mama told me never to trust Jimmy and come to her first if ever Jimmy came up with a plan for me. After I got Mama’s corset tightened the way she liked it, she sent me downstairs to get out of her business. Mama needed some separation, she always said. I think it had something to do with the fact that neither of us knew who my Daddy was, and that was more a source of discomfort for her than me.

I went down and started sweeping the saloon ‘cause each day I had to show Jimmy that I was worth keepin’ around. Mrs. Bridewell, she took pity on me and every now and then fed me a small cupcake and drink. But Jimmy, he wasn’t one to cotton to no son of a whore.

Sweeping around Jimmy’s table I accidentally knocked a shot glass over with the broom handle and Jimmy, he reached out, grabbed my hair and punched me right in the face. I knew my lip was split and Jimmy, he just mumbled something angry and kicked at me to get away and Mrs. Bridewell give me a drink.

So there I was drinking a moxie when everything in the saloon went suddenly silent. Then I heard someone say, real quiet-like, “Chalupa.” I looked at the door. There, in the middle of the opening, was a man wearing a greasy serape and a black sombrero. A silver buckle held the bandolero across his chest with an enormous CC worked into the metal. Two Schofields peeked out from under that dirty serape.

He walked slowly to Jimmy’s table and all the men seated there rose and backed off. The Chalupa sat down and lifted his unshaved chin at Jimmy. Not a word was spoken. Jimmy gathered the cards. He shuffled, cut and dealt them. I could see his hands was shakin’.

For a kid who’d grown up in a whorehouse saloon, I knew precious little about gambling. All I know is the cards kept getting dealt and Jimmy Ryan kept getting angrier and angrier. After a while, I seen my Mama come down the stairs. I assumed she wanted to see why everything had gotten so quiet.

Well, the first thing that happened was The Chalupa looked up with his big, sad brown eyes. He gazed upon Mama and a tiny smile grew across his lips. Mama just stared at him. Next thing I knew, Jimmy snarled at The Chalupa, who had let his concentration on the game lag while he was smiling at Mama.

‘Course Jimmy was on the verge of beating Chalupa for the first time that evening. But The Chalupa just drops his cards and rises from his seat. Still staring at Mama. “Evangeline,” he said. Jimmy Ryan looked around the room and said, “What the fuck is this? Are we gambling here or are you going to play stinkfinger with the help?”

“Where is he?” The Chalupa asked her. Mama glanced at me. Before I know it, the entire saloon was looking at me. Including The Chalupa.

He walked slowly across the room until he was standing directly in front of Mama. The Chalupa put his arm around her and beckoned me over. I stumbled to them and smelled the desert all over his serape. The Chattanooga Chalupa looked down at me and asked, “Do you know who I am?” I stammered, “Th-The Ch-Chatt. The Chattanooga Chalupa.” He nodded his head slowly.

It was hard to see his face under that huge sombrero that he refused to take off. “I am also your- “

“What the fuck is this?” Jimmy bellowed. “Miranda? Get that bitch back upstairs! I’m fifty-two grand into The Chalupa and he’s not going anywhere.”

Mrs. Bridewell came out from the office behind the bar. “Eve, get on upstairs. Take the boy with you,” she said.

The Chalupa stepped forward and said, “Ma’am, they’re going nowhere.” And turning to Jimmy, he said, “Our game is over, friend. Take the money. I don’t want it.”

Well, I could see Jimmy getting red in the face. He stood up and said, “Chalupa, I don’t want your goddamn charity. I want to win this money and I won’t have you distracted by no whore!” Just like that, Jimmy pulled a gun and – the memory still breaks my heart – shot my Mama right in the head.

Before Jimmy finished a breath, The Chalupa put a bullet right in his forehead. Jimmy’s eyes crossed and down he went.

“Mama!” I screamed. I ran over to her but it was no use. I could see she was dead. And The Chalupa was down on the floor, holding her, cradling her. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and I got to wondering, even while I was feeling so broken up myself, why this legend was cryin’ over a dead whore.

Of course, I know you’re probably thinkin’ The Chalupa came out and told me he was my father and had traveled to that wretched saloon to save me and Mama from a life of misery. That all his traveling and adventurin’ was nothin’ more than his quest to find us, his family.

But that wasn’t how it happened.

The Chalupa, he give all the money on the table to Mrs. Bridewell and said, “See Evangeline is buried properly. And this money is for the boy. I don’t want to come back here and find it was stolen from him.” Mrs. Bridewell looked over at me with her huge doe eyes, all tearing up. Nods her head.

And with that, The Chalupa walked out and I never saw him again.

A man from one of the other tables touched my should and asked, “Pardon me boy, but was that -?”

“It was my Daddy,” I said. And to this day, I’m not sure why I said it.

Mrs. Bridewell, she put the money in the bank for me and I had a little book that allowed me to take some out on occasion when I needed it. As I got older, the drinking demon got hold of me and a lot of the money went to that. But, that night in Dodge City, while tragic, also gave me some hope.

Maybe it was true. Maybe he was my Daddy.

That thought has kept me going these long years since. I like to think this world allows for great things to happen to men like me and The Chattanooga Chalupa.

The sons of whores.

________________________________________________

Well, here is my entry in Chuck Wendig’s latest flash fiction challenge over at terribleminds. As I noted in an earlier post, the challenge was to choose a ‘Dirty Ass Sex Move’ as the title of a story. “The Chattanooga Chalupa” in my story of course bears no resemblance to the actual sex move (google it if you want to know what it is). If you’re intrigued by some of Chuck’s challenges, head on over to terribleminds and check more of the submitted stories. Image by cdharrison

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I“m on my way to the Writer Unboxed “Un-Conference” in my hometown, Salem MA, in a few weeks so I was revisiting my post on fictional characters being swept up in events, taken out for an adventure, and generally being fetched by the world. Because, don’t we all want to be fetched by the world, even vicariously, through the characters in our favorite stories? Anyway, since I was reading it again, I thought I’d just be lazy and re-post. Slacker!

Over at terribleminds, Chuck Wendig recently asked his readers (many of whom are also writers) some interesting questions. One of them was “What gets you to read a book?” The answers he received (nearly 200!) ran the gamut from ‘great covers’ to ‘word of mouth’ and on through to ‘authorial voice’. While it could be argued that a slew of writers giving their opinion on this topic might not actually represent the tastes of the reading (but non-writing) public, the answers do give a writer some interesting food for thought.

A follow up question posed by Chuck was, “What makes you put a book down?” This question garnered an even larger comment tsunami from his readership. One of those comments struck me as particularly interesting. A respondent opined: “I would sooner read Mein Kompff (sic) again than another novel, or any piece of media, that is infected with the Hero’s Journey plot structure. The rantings of one of the most evil men in the history of the world is a far more enjoyable than seeing the schlub everyman hero be coerced into an ‘amazing new world,’ murder his bizarro-father, and bring the macguffin back to the mundane reality to resume a more cushy status quo.I like to think of Joseph Campbell as the Albert Einstein of the creative world: a well meaning guy who made an amazing discovery that’s being used to commit atrocities.” Hitler’s self-serving (but ultimately boring) pseudo-autobiography notwithstanding,

I at first reacted with anger. But I sort of get the commenter’s point: when the “hero’s journey” is mechanically pushed into your face, it can be a turn-off. Seems contrived. Done before. Boring. It is a waxwork of art. It looks real. Like a story we should be into, but we already know what’s going to happen. Sure, we can read on to see how skillfully the author puts his characters through their paces, or we can just toss the book in disgust. I think it’s a valid criticism. I especially admire the comparison of Campbell to Einstein and the unintended, ‘atrocious’ consequences of their respective accomplishments.

“Fetched by the world.”

Recently, I was reading an author interview in GlimmerTrain (I can’t remember who it was). But this author stated she wrote her characters to be ‘fetched by the world’, and it just stopped me. Yes, that’s it. What an excellent phrase: fetched by the world. So preferable to the more tiresome “hero’s journey.”

Great stories are peopled with characters ‘fetched by the world’. Sure, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, and Frodo Baggins spring immediately to mind (Thank you, Hollywood), but it needn’t be all fantasy and quests. Who else was fetched? Jonathan Harker, Emma Bovary, Humbert Humbert, Kunta Kinte, Grendel, Atticus Finch, Colonel Aureliano Buendia, Jean Brodie, Gregor Samsa, Scarlett O’Hara, Dorothy, Clarice Starling, Siddhartha, Okonkwo, Ahab, Ishmael, and Titus Groan. Each and every one of them – fetched by the world. In a big way.

And we continue to read those stories through generations because, sooner or later, the world comes to fetch us all. Not a white whale, maybe, but a shadow on the chest x-ray. Or finding love with the wrong person. Or losing your job and having to drink it away or reinvent yourself. The world fetches us. That’s what it does. We can ignore the call, or we can jump on the train, follow the yellow brick road, go to Alderan, or Mordor, or walk endlessly across Dublin, or swallow the red pill, or go down the rabbit hole. We can undergo chemoradiation, or get divorced, or secretly love a 14 year-old or, or live through the day of our child’s funeral, or win the lottery, or ,God forbid, have sex with road kill. Or we can do nothing. No blood, no foul.

The world isn’t the explainable stage of rationality we want it to be. All bets are off. And we can heed the call and bring back our macguffin. Just as Hitler envisioned himself the ‘hero’ of his epic ‘struggle’ and brought back to our ‘mundane reality’ the spectre of National Socialism.

Campbell, I believe, knew it. He wasn’t worried about artistic overkill, the tired boredom of the reader in the marketplace. He was onto the very root of storytelling itself. Something buried deep inside us. Fear and aspiration. He was writing of characters being fetched by the world. Failing. Succeeding. Dealing with life, death, love, anger, jealousy, beauty, loneliness, alienation. Joyous rapture and murderous intention. It’s what stories contribute to our common understanding, unchanged, across all these generations.

The ‘hero’s journey’ isn’t a formula. It’s a way to understand life. Your very life.

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Note: I originally published this a couple of years ago when the Fukushima Daichii nuclear plant was crippled in a tsunami, subsequently poisoning the ground water and leading to domestic water shortages. Now in the news we hear of the contamination of the Elk River by a coal processing compound and the ensuing ban on the use of the domestic water supply, including drinking water. I just wanted to throw this out there again (because it’s newsy). I became fascinated with the choices this situation could force on ordinary people.

A Glass of Water

Atsuko heard the creaking of the porch screen and hurried out to greet her husband.

“What?” she asked. Her eyes bulged and glistened.

Hoshu limped through the door after removing his shoes. “There is no bottled water left at any of the stores. Where is Tokutaro?”

“He’s out back playing with his friends.”

A breeze blew in the open door. Atsuko rushed to close it. “The neighbors have said the same thing. No bottled water at all. What will we do? Maybe we can go to Kamakura and stay with my sister and her family?”

Hoshu looked down at his gnarled hands and sighed. “It will be the same thing down there sooner or later. It’s in the wind as well as the water. It goes everywhere.”

“The radio and the television both said the water in the tap was fine to drink. The levels had gone up and babies shouldn’t get any. But they said it would not be a problem for anyone else. It is not too high.” Atsuko twisted a dry rag in her hands.

Outside in the street, children yelled and Hoshu could hear a ball slapping against the side of the building: Tokutaro playing football with his friends.

What does she want me to say? Hoshu wondered. He’d been at work laying bricks all morning and had finished his last bottle of water before coming home. Atsuko had promptly sent him back out in search of more. Now he was parched and found it hard to speak without coughing.

Atsuko said, “Tokutaro has a bottle with him outside, but that is the last one.”

Hoshu looked at his wife and shrugged. “It’s tap water then. The man at the store said they won’t have bottled water at least for a week. We can’t go that long without water to drink. The neighbors are all in the same position. I don’t see we have much choice.”

“Tokutaro. He is only eight years old, Hoshu.”

“Do you think I don’t know the age of my son? That a few hours without water have damaged my brain?” Hoshu stood up and went over to the sink. He peered down the drain looking for any telltale sign of contamination. What was he supposed to see, a green glow from deep in the drainpipe?

“What are you doing over there?” Atsuko came across the room and joined him at the sink.

“Looks fine. Smells alright,” he said.

“Don’t Hoshu.”

He grabbed a glass from the drying rack and held it under the tap. His hand did not shake at all, which surprised him.

He looked at Atsuko and took a deep breath, held it for a second, and then exhaled. Hoshu turned the cold-water handle, letting cool clear water spill freely onto the white porcelain of the sink.

Atsuko took two steps back and bit her lower lip. “Hoshu, no…”

He filled the glass, turned off the water and walked to the kitchen table. Hoshu placed the glass in the center of the table. They stared at the glass of water in silence. Hoshu imagined downing the water. What would happen, really?

Finally he broke the silence. “Sooner or later, we’ll have to drink.”

“But let’s wait.” Atsuko said. “Maybe one of the neighbors will have a relative who will bring some. Or we could go down to the store one more time. Can’t we wait until we’re sure there’s no other way?”

They stared at the glass of water while joyful shouts floated up from the street. They heard Tokutaro yell “Goal!”

I was driving around today and NPR was airing a story about the partial meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The story centered on the questionable safety of the Tokyo tap water.

The government has advised that infants not have any tap water. The question remained if older kids and adults could drink with impunity. Government pronouncements indicated that radiation levels, while elevated above baseline, were not such that a health hazard was likely.